37 comments:

robert61
said...

No, there's no list, but there is a committee that will refuse to approve the name if you decide your little darling should be called Turdblossom Bernadotte or Mutually Assured Destruction Hammarskjöld.

I know a couple who battled with them because they wanted to give their kid the middle name Mig. Like the Palins, this couple claimed it was Norwegian, while the committee reasonably objected that it might be burdensome to be named after a Soviet fighter jet. The couple eventually got their way.

In England last week I heard a pregnant teenager (White) on her mobile phone discussing what to call her kid. Whether it was a boy or girl she was going with Tiana, the only question was whether to have an apostrophe somewhere - probably before the 'I', but maybe after it.

It's like really hard to make these names up!

Names were once intended to place you in a specific community and culture, these nu-names are intended to NOT place the child in a specific community.

Virtual names for virtual lives. And T'iana was computer-generated, literally: she'd found it on the internet, of course.

In Catholic countries back in the good old days, you were only allowed to choose names from the Bible or from the calendar of Saints' names. There was no shortage of odd names in those if you were into it, but at least there was a limit to what you could name your children after.

Now pretty much anything is allowed as long as it's not profane or demeaning.

If you ask me, typical US "Black" names now in vogue ARE demeaning. What was wrong with Jack and Jill?

My daughter and I sometimes have a laugh looking at the results of the 100 and 200 meter dash in her local track meets.

Two stories I've head, both true:

There was a girl in Alabama named Latrina.

My sister's ex-boyfriend's sister once worked as a special ed teacher in Detroit, and there was a girl in her class named Female (pronounced with two long e's, accent on the second syllable) Jackson (I'm not sure of the last name). The sister/teacher always wondered why they gave their daughter that name, and finally got the chance to ask when the mother showed up at a PTA meeting. The mother replied, "We didn't name her that, the hospital did. When she came back from the birthin' room, they had already put a plastic band around her wrist with that name on it."

Like a man on another blog who claimed he never eats halal food, this comment is an example of someone who repeats words without knowing what they mean. As it is, there are only two distinctively Islamic names on the 2007 boys' list, #72 and #95, and none on the girls' list.

I wonder whether Jacquizz's parents were fans of Shakespeare, because the name of the character Jacques in - can't remember which play - is pronounced in 2 syllables, more or less like the name here (i.e jay-queez).

The funniest inner city names I've seen with my own eyes were Tequila and Toshiba. Think for a moment about the kind of mother who would call her child Tequila. There was also a Sha-qui-qui. I've only heard of Latrina from others, I haven't seen that myself.

From the Wikipedia entry on Kobe Bean Bryant:

"His parents named him after the famous beef of Kobe, Japan, which they saw on a restaurant menu."

Among others things, ghetto names tell us about the primacy of ethnocentrism above most other considerations in the minds of people who haven't been extensively, expensively brainwashed to reject it. This primacy is the natural human condition. Jacquizz Rodgers would have probably derived some tangible benefits in his life if, as a Jack Rodgers, he could have been occasionally confused with a white guy on paper. But his parents chose the "ethnocentric" route anyway. The facts that that's not actually an African name and that it's unintentionally hilarious are beside the point.

When I worked at a fabric shop in North Charleston in 2000, I met a 15-year-old with a baby girl. I can't remember the first name, it was ghetto, but it ended in "Two". The mother and grandmother explained that the young mother was the first "Laquita" or whatever and the baby was "Laquita Two".

Doubting Thomas -- I met my sister's boyfriend (who struck me as credible), but I never met his sister, but it was told to me as a true story. I guess I can't swear it's true. And the fact that you heard it as a joke does make it seem less likely. Maybe I shouldn't be so credulous.

Given that a fair proportion of white Americans are naming their children after consumer brands like "Magnum" or "Lexus" or "Del Monte", the name "jacquizz" seems just about par for the overall course. Some white folks even name their kids things like "Moon Unit", or name them after cities like "Paris" or "Dallas". What next, "Hoboken" Hilton? I have no love for so-called "ebonic" names either, but our "free market" naming system seems better on the balance than gubment bureaucrats getting involved. That seems to be the case in parts of Europe.

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